Sharp County record., 1887-12-01

CAPRICE and stuff him with confectionery |
Before YOU are aware of it that boy OF SIX |
years will 20 down the street, cigar in |
his mouth and ready- on any corner with |
his comrades to compare pugiliStic attain
ments. The parent who allows the CHILD |
to grow up without ever having learned |
the great duty of obedience and submis-
sion has prepared a cup of burning gall
for his own lips and appalling destruction
for his descendant. Remember Eli and
his two sons, HOphni and Phinehas.
A second error prevalent in the training
of children is a laying out Of theory and
following it without arranging it to
varieties of disposition. In every family
YOU will find striking differences Of tenn
permanent. This child is too timid, and
that too bold, and this too miserly, and
that too wa5teful; this too inactive,
and that too boisterOus. Now, the
farmer, who should plant corn and wheat
and turnips in the same way, then put
them through one hopper and grind them
in the same mill, would not be so much Of
a fool as the parents who would attempt
to discipline and educate all their children
in the same manner. IL needs a Skillful
hand 10 adjust these checks and balances.
| The rigidity of government which is nee
essarv to hold in this imDetuous nature
| would utterly crush that flexible DISPOSE
| tion, while the gentle reproof that
| would suffice for the latter would, when
used on the form er, be like attempting TO
| hold a champing Bucephalus with reins Of
! gossamer.
| The third error prevalent in the train
| ing of children is the One-sided develop
| ment of either the physical, intellectual
| or moral nature at the expense of the
/ others. Those for instance. greatly mis-
| take who, while they are faithful in the
| intellectual and moral culture Of children,
| forget the physical The bright eyes
/ half quenched by night study, the cramped
! chest that comes from too much bending
| over school desks, the weak side resulting
| from sedentariness of habit, pale cheeks
! and the gaunt bodies Of multitudes OF
| children attest that physical development
does not always go along with intellectual
and moral.
How do you suppose all those treasures
of knowledge the child gets will look in
shattered caskets? And how much will
YOU give for the wealthiest cargo when it
is put into a leaky ship? How can that
bright sharp blade Of child's attain
ments be welded without any handle?
| What are brains worth without shoulders
to carry them2 What is a child with
magnificent mind but an exhausted body?
| Better that a young man OF twenty-one
90 forth in the world without knowing
from 2 if he have health Of body and en-
ergy to push his way through the world,
than at twenty.one to enter upon active
life, his head stuffed with Socrates, and
| Herodotus, and Bacon, aud La Place, but
no physical force to sustain him in the
shock of earthly conflicts. From this in
finite blunder of parents how many have
come ont in life with a genius that could
have piled Ossa upon Pelion and mounted
upon them to scale the Heavens, and have
laid down painting with physical ex-
hangtion before a mOle-hill. They who
might have thrilled senates and mar
shaled armies and startled the world with
the shock of their scientific batteries,
l-a--Fs.-sHzzt .sE1-ss4-- r,.l- - PCS
scriptions sor Indigestion. They owed
all the thutderbolts of Jupiter, but could
not get out of their rocking chair to use
them.
Fire in the furnace heats the house or
drives the steamer; but, uncontrolled,
warehouses go down in awful crash before
it, and in a few hours half city will be in
black ruin, walls and towers and
churches and monuments. You must ac-
company the education of the intellect
with the education Of the heart, or you are
rousing up within your child an energy
which will be blasting and terrific. Bet
| ter a wicked Ounce than a wicked philoso-
pher
The fourth error often committed in the
training Of children is the suppression Of
childish sportfulnes5. The most triumph.
ant death Of any child that 1 ever knew
was that of Scoville Haynes McCOllum.
| A few days before that he was at my
| house in Syracuse, and he ran like deer
and his halloO made the woods echo. You
/ could hear him coming block Off, so full
was he Of romp and laughter and whistle.
| Don't put religion on your child as a
| straight jacket. Parents after having
for a good many years been jostled about
| in the rough world, often loose their viva
! city, and are astonished to see how their
| children can act so thoughtlessly of the
/ edIlleSJ "OTlu all dDOuO UueLl. L udb Is q
| cruel parent who quenches any of the
| light in child'3 soul. Instead of arrest
| ing its sportfulness, go forth and help
| him trundle the hoop, and fly the kite,
and build the snow castle. Those shOul-
ders are too little to carry burden, that
brow is too young to be wrinkled, those
feet are too sprightly to go along at
| funeral pace. God bless their young
| hearts!
! Now is the time for them to be sportful.
Let them rOmp and sing and laugh, and
go with a rush aud hurrah. In this way
they gather up a surplus of energy
for future life. For the child that walks
around with a scow, dragging his feet as
though they were weights and sitting
down by the hour in mOping and
grumbling prophecy a lite of utter mani
ton and discomfort. Sooner hush the
robins in the air till they are silent as
bat, and lecture the frisking lambs on the
hillside until they walk like old sheep,
rather than put exhilarant childhood in
the stocks.
The fish error in the training of child
hood is the pOstpOnement of its moral
culture until too late. Multitudes of chill
dren, because of their precocity, have been